Providing computer users with useful and understandable controls for navigating information presented upon a computer display has become increasingly important as the amount of information stored in computing environments has grown. In recent years, computers have become able to handle larger and larger files, and the type of stored information has diversified to include pictures, music, documents, and other media.
With such an increase in complexity, a problem frequently experienced by computer users is the inability to quickly locate desired subject matter. When a user is looking for a specific piece of content, the ability to efficiently view information not currently shown on the screen can greatly assist in navigation of content on a computer.
For example, a user may experience difficulties locating a particular file on a computer. A typical method to organize computer files is in a hierarchical fashion with the files stored within folders. File system browsers, also known as shell browsers, enable users to navigate through the file system and locate and open files and folders. For example, Microsoft Corporation's WINDOWS® EXPLORER™ is an operating system utility which enables users to browse the file system.
Many users find it difficult to correctly identify a file based on the information currently available in conventional file system browsers. Of course the contents of a file can be verified by opening it with an application program, but this method of browsing files is extremely inefficient. The ability to view information about the content contained in a file can greatly assist a user in identifying information about a particular file without having to open it.
Conventional file system browsers, however, do not allow users to preview the content of a file without actually opening the file. To date, the ability of users to preview content has been limited to special purpose software applications. For example, Microsoft Corporation's WINDOWS® XP™ operating system includes an image browser for use in the My Pictures folder. The My-Pictures folder utilizes software that enables users to view pictures as photos, not just as document icons. My Picture's image browsing features include the ability to view thumbnail-size and large versions of photos, rotate photos that are sideways, and create a slide show. The preview control area in the My Picture's folder contains an enlarged preview image of a user-selected image, iterator buttons to assist a user in iterating through a series of pictures and controls for rotating pictures in a clockwise or counterclockwise direction. The image browsing features may also be enabled in other folders by selecting to display a thumbnail view of a file instead of an icon. This functionality may be applied, for example, to certain word processing and presentation files, as well as to graphics files. However, such a thumbnail view simply renders a preset graphical image which has been associated with a file. While the image browsing features in WINDOWS® XP™ have advanced the state of the art by alleviating the need to invoke a separate application program to view graphical images, such functionality is limited to displaying preset images associated with files.
Another area of interest is navigation through documents which are displayed on a computer screen. As the ability of computers to handle such information increases, the amount and type of information that can be presented in a single document has also grown. To facilitate navigation of these documents, various software applications include enhanced navigational tools. For example, in Microsoft Corporation's PowerPoint™ 2002 presentation program, a user may choose to display a thumbnail view of the various slides in one pane, while an adjacent pane displays one slide at a time. A user may scroll through the thumbnail pane to find desired information and, by clicking a mouse button on the preferred thumbnail, can cause that slide to become viewable in the adjacent pane. While this thumbnail view is useful to locate a slide with a certain piece of information, this view simply displays the entire set of content while decreasing the space available to view the slides individually.
Another example of enhanced navigational functionality is found in Microsoft Corporation's Word™ 2002 word processing program. When utilizing the scrollbar in Word™ to navigate in a document, clicking a mouse button over the indicator box in the scrollbar causes a text box displaying the current page number and heading information to be displayed. As the indicator box is dragged, the information within the text box is updated to reflect the current position and heading information. While this scrollbar functionality improves navigation, a user must commit to navigation away from currently displayed information to alter the text box information and, furthermore, the page and heading information is not a preview in that it relates only to the currently displayed document segment.
Accordingly, there is a need for an improved user interface which enables a user navigating within an item of content to see a preview of the information that would be displayed if a proposed navigational action were performed. There is further a need for a method that allows users to preview a proposed navigational action to be performed with respect to an item of content.